Welcome to Love Strategies

The ultimate guide to dating smart and finding the love of your life.

Nina Atwood, author and internationally known dating coach, will guide you step-by-step to fulfilling your dreams of a loving, lifetime soul mate relationship. Send your questions to Nina so you can stay on the right path. Use Singlescoaching to create your own personalized dating game plan so that you can find and keep a lasting love!

Do you feel thwarted in love? Develop this one emotional tool and it will change everything. I know a wonderful guy. Jim is a very successful executive who absolutely loves his job helping to run a mid-sized company. He is a striking guy - tall, good looking, and fit. He’s super kind and considerate of others, one of the many reasons he is a great leader and his team reveres him so much. Jim will retire in his mid-fifties a multi-millionaire, hard earned and well deserved. One thing that Jim doesn’t have is a great relationship with a woman. He is [...]

If you’re setting intentions for the new year, this one may be your most important. There is ONE THING that will make this your best year ever for dating. I love HGTV, especially the house hunter episodes. Usually it’s a couple, searching for the perfect home for their family. Getting on the same page with the wish list is sometimes a challenge, but by the end of the show, they’re happily at home in their new abode. One thing all house hunters have in common is that they know what they want. They don’t randomly wander around looking at houses [...]

If you think sexting is cool, think twice. Reality check: sexting hurts you and him. Far too many women today think it’s okay for men to send them sexually explicit texts and messages, or to send them to men, and that is a real problem. Like my colleague, Dr. Keith Ablow, I do not buy the notion that women and men are no different from one another sexually, and that the newfound freedom of women today to hook up frequently with random men is a positive thing. Sexting dehumanizes relationships, rendering them to pornographic images on a small screen, devoid of any [...]

This season’s The Bachelorette had a few twists and turns, notably the dumping of Nick on the day of the final rose ceremony. I turned to my husband about a third of the way through Monday night’s show and said, “she’s going to choose Josh, and here’s why . . .” Nick gave it all away in his final comments and actions leading up to the last day of the season. There are great relationship take-aways from this season’s show, and they all point to the top three reasons why Andi chose Josh. They might very well be YOUR top [...]

If you have ever felt devastated by rejection, you are not alone. Recent research shows why: our brains don’t know the difference between the emotional pain of being rejected and actual physical pain. Erin dated John for six months. While he was still checking her out, she was falling deeply in love. Finally, he couldn’t deny the reality: they weren’t on the same page, and it wasn’t going to change. So he broke up with her, giving her the typical dating-stuck-in-the-friend-zone excuse: that he just didn’t see it going anywhere. This, in spite of the fact that they’d been sleeping [...]

Before you hit “send” on that text, stop and think. You may be tanking a perfectly good relationship. Here’s how to keep your new love on the rails. Some people say you don’t need rules for texting – it’s anything goes. It’s a great tool and it’s easier than picking up the phone and calling, so why not use it in just about any scenario? I say, it IS a great tool, but like any tool, it can be used to build something or it can be used to tear something apart. When used the wrong way, texting can tank what might [...]

Before you dedicate yourself to changing a guy, take a look at these guy types. The one you want to rehab may be the one you can’t. There are four general categories of guy dating pain that you may encounter. One is a potential salvage job, one is potentially dangerous, and two are projects that you could spend a lifetime on and get nowhere. Here’s the difference. One: The commitment phobe. This is the guy who can’t comprehend settling down, but that doesn’t stop him from dating. The true commitment phobe has it wired this way: Commitment is PERMANENT, FOREVER, and you can [...]

If you’re dating someone special and talking about living together, think twice. It may not be as good for you as you think. The other day I came home stressed out and my husband offered to give me a head and shoulder rub. What bliss! Not only did it feel good to my tense muscles, but as he rubbed, I felt my entire system calm down. I know without having to think about it that my husband loves me and is there for me. So that neck and shoulder rub wasn’t just physically therapeutic, it was emotionally therapeutic. And there [...]

According to the latest census research, the over age 50 crowd is now experiencing double the divorce rate of younger groups. The even more riveting subgroup is those over 50 who are remarried. The odds of divorce are 40% higher for people in remarriages, so the people most likely to divorce late in life are the ones who divorced and remarried earlier. I heard one recent news report that 40% of online daters today are over age 50. If you’re in that group, you are at significant risk for a rebound divorce: marrying the wrong person, usually far too quickly, later in life. [...]

As a relationship coach I’ve heard lots of single men say some version of the following: “I like her, she’s cute and all, but I don’t know . . . I’m just not feeling that strongly about her. But she keeps calling me and, well, it’s nice to have someone to go out with.” But what I heard when they met “the one” was vastly different! “Wow, she is amazing. It took me three tries to get her to go out with me, but once we did, things took off. We’ve been dating for a few months – yeah I [...]

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